Mind Map

           The concept of the mind map is applied to grammar teaching in China in recent years. Buzon and Barry (1993) defined Mind map as an organizational technique to help students organize facts and thoughts in a map format which contains a central image, main themes radiating from the central image, branches with key images and key words, plus branches forming a connected nodal structure.  Through mind mapping, students can develop their abilities in memory, brainstorming, learning and creativity (Buzon & Barry, 1993).  Because the mind map is often created and decorated with colors, images, signs, symbols, codes, and so on, it can bring fun to grammar teaching and arouse students' interest in learning and eventually improve the learning efficiency (Gu, 2016). To illustrate the way to impart the grammatical knowledge of prepositions indicating a place to students with the method of Mind map, Wang (2019) gave an example in his research: when designing a mind map on the blackboard to teach the prepositions, the teacher marks the topic “ indicating place” in the center and puts the prepositions in the first branch; while introducing the use rules of one preposition in the second branch, the teacher explains the rules in Chinese; further explanation of the rules comes in the third branch with one example sentence which corresponds each of the use rules; students can sum up the grammar rules of other prepositions by following the teacher’s steps and also can use colors and graphics to make the mind maps more beautiful and appealing.  Wang (2019) concluded that with the help of this method, the students can summarize and memorize knowledge points systematically, extract information quickly and accurately and enjoy the fun of designing and decorating the mind maps at the same time.

              Feel free to watch the videos below to know more about mind map.